Brownfield’s of Dreams

Bill and Paulie do a great job on this topic so I’ll defer to them but as I watched the first half of the City Council meeting last night I was shocked at how summarily a non no-lo housing project was dismissed by the Mayor and a tardy City Councilor. Let me be clear on the fact that I know nothing of the agreement on Green Hill Park and that the obstacles for putting an Innovation Center there may be too great to overcome, but for the Mayor to essentially invite lawsuits and the Councilor to go on the record against it (an quite frankly insult a local businessman) without any discussions taking place is absurd and shows a complete lack of leadership. I have to wonder what the response would have been if the $15 million federally funded project were another no-lo income housing project. The ironic thing is that the same City Councilor actually mentioned the Winn project in the old Chevalier building and his only concern was that there wasn’t any retail space on the first floor. I guess he deserves some credit, because I think that’s the only mention I’ve heard of one of these projects on the Council floor. We certainly have an “if we build it they will come mentality” in this city, we just need to do a better job of prioritizing the “it” and the “they”. It’s time for some leadership on issues like these.